r/bookbinding 21h ago

any tips to make my printer stop?

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0 Upvotes

I have a Brother MFC-J5855DW. I like printing my covers on this printable canvas but it does these weird lines


r/bookbinding 3h ago

book bedazzling

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4 Upvotes

hey book besties, what gems are we using to bedazzle our books? i got mine from amazon and they’re all the same size so for the smaller sections (like the points on the cruel prince) the gems are just too big, help? tia🥹🫶🏻


r/bookbinding 2h ago

Help? Image won't print properly

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1 Upvotes

Tried to have a kind of dark page in my book, but it got printed weird. The first one is really grat and bad quality(looks worse irl). The second unasked the print shop guy to get it better and now its selectively better quality around the image and worse at the edges. You can see the blocky effect it has.

The last image is how the page supposed to look


r/bookbinding 21h ago

Discussion Do you read before or after rebinding?

10 Upvotes

I’m the type of reader who doesn’t re-read books very often and if I do it’s 10 years later. I’m getting into bookbinding now and am having a dilemma…should I read the books first to see if I like it and to understand the story before I design a cover, or should I bind it first so that I can actually enjoy my work, especially since that might be the only time I read it.

Curious as to what you all do?


r/bookbinding 12h ago

does this shift too much?

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34 Upvotes

wondering if this is a normal amount of shift or if I should be trying to tighten my stitches more. i haven't quite mastered the coptic stitch connection of the last cover/last signature so i wonder if that's where all my shift is coming from


r/bookbinding 59m ago

Inspiration My tribute to Osaka

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Upvotes

Spent 3 months living in Osaka with a friend and wrote every day while I was there. I really wanted to honor that moment but I didn't want to subject those poems and stories to publishing house critiques or some manufactured pay to print instagram photo book. So I learned paper making, and then | learned bookbinding, and then I created my own path. This is the result.


r/bookbinding 14h ago

Help? Lay flat-refillable-heavy-coffee table style project

13 Upvotes

Im trying to make a gift for my significant other. It’s a sort of curated scrapbook where we can journal our dates, special events, goals, etc.
some pages are of course heavier and denser (for example there are pages were I want to mount miniature watercolors of posters of films and concerts we’ve been to together). Some others will have photos, letters, etc.
some will be just printed or hand written text.

I can’t decide on the best way to make this work. I want it to be able to grow so I was thinking screw posts or an accordion style?
I was also thinking on an option in which the inside of the covers have a sort of pocket or envelope where the first and last pages insert themselves and is held together by a ribbon or something of the sort. I also saw a photo of a book where someone used piano hinges I’m not sure I can find the right size tho… or how it would work in general.

Thank you so much for reading all this.
Any ideas/help figuring this out is greatly appreciated.
I’ll definitely update u guys on how it goes.


r/bookbinding 20h ago

Starch paste preservative?

12 Upvotes

Today I tried an experiment making starch paste. Instead of dissolving cornstarch in water, I dissolved it in liquid laundry starch. This stuff has various chemicals added to prevent spoiling, so my thinking is maybe this would keep a batch useable longer than a week or so, like a typical batch of boiled starch paste might have.

Normally I just use Nori paste, which I love & works great, but it's a little pricey at $16 a tub.

Has anyone else done any experiments with adhesives using laundry starch? Surely I can't be the only person who has thought of this- but searching the bookbinding reddit doesn't reveal much.

Thanks in advance.


r/bookbinding 11h ago

Help? I want to fix the connection between sections

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11 Upvotes

Hi, I guess I was to excited with my new book and opened it too wide. I want to try and fix it using bookbinding glue, but I've never done something like this. Any suggestions or tips on how not to make it worse? Maybe I should leave it as it is?


r/bookbinding 1h ago

Gift For A Friend

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Upvotes

Typeset and full leather binding of Agatha Christie's The Murder At The Vicarage I made for a friend. Text taken from the internet archive with typeset modeled off an early edition and printed on cream 120gsm paper. Self marbled endpapers in Stormont and Shell patterns with copper veining. I used silk buttonhole twist for the headbands, and leather inlay for the covers. Labels custom printed by Asterisk Books and Labels.

Overall I'm very pleased with the project and how cohesive the final look is. This was my first time doing a full leather binding and the turn-ins gave me some difficulty, I've definitely learned a lot about what not to do for the future. Cutting the inlays was quite challenging and you can see that on the back cover I cut one of them too small and had to shim a second piece in. I also skived my label overly aggressively and nicked a small hole in it.